Hillary Hall
Head swim coach Fred Shaw started swimming about 47 years ago while attending Parkman Middle School; when some friends convinced him to attend a swim school called “Age Group Swimming.”
Through that school he realized he enjoyed swimming and he liked the idea of pushing himself to the limit. He continued swimming while he attended Taft High School, and was a member of the swim team at the University of Southern California.
Out of the four years he attended USC, his swim team won the NCAA Division 1 championships three out of those four years. “Outside of the Olympics, that’s the highest you can go in swimming,” he said.
Shaw was born on Dec. 22, 1945 in Los Angeles, and spent most of his childhood in Woodland Hills. His goal in graduate school at California State University Northridge was to teach anthropology. If he wasn’t coaching, he would most likely be teaching anthropology.
He taught anthropology at Vista Del Mar High School from 1974 to 1989 where he was a program supervisor and athletic director there, as well as a teacher of deep water aerobics through the extension program.
He has been at Pierce College since 1992, where he started swimming for personal enjoyment before he landed a job as the head swim coach.
On Feb. 24, his team competed against Ventura College. At the half-way point, the women were 10 points ahead. “That’s almost unheard of,” said Shaw. “Then we ended up losing at the end, but it put a scare into the best team and Pierce swam great. They swam better than I expected, and the men swam well, too. I’m really looking forward to continuing improvement and having a lot of fun.”
Shaw says the best aspect of being a swim coach is seeing the student athletes improve. Shaw says, “I like to see the look on their face when they go faster than they ever thought they could.”
Shaw’s hopes for his current students are that they continue to work hard, while his own goal is to have five athletes make it to the state championships. His advice for swimmers is to have fun and pay attention to improvement.
“If you go through periods where you don’t seem to be improving, just stick with it, ” he urged. “There are times when you might swim the same speed for a while, and then you’ll make a big drop, and you might sort of stay the same and then you’ll make a big improvement, so then basically the thing is don’t give up, keep at it.”
The only negative about being a swim coach is driving the vans to the swim meets, because Shaw hates the traffic. If and when he retires, he says that’s going to be the main reason for his retirement: driving on the L.A. freeways with a van full of swimmers.
“If we could charter a bus every week, and I wouldn’t have to drive, it wouldn’t be as bad,” he says.
“I’ll probably coach for a few more years,” said Shaw. “Then I’ll kind of retire from being the head coach and I’ll maybe just help out; let somebody else do it for a while.”